Feral Children ::: photo by Josh Lovseth

Lately I’ve tried my best to avoid listening to any musical acts that I’ve never heard of prior to watching them upon some random stage about town. I accidentally broke this rule when I heard Feral Children on KEXP a couple of weeks ago on my way to buy some jeans. I don’t really remember what the song sounded like, I only caught the last 10 seconds or so. Until the Feral Children’s Brand New Blood album release party at Neumos last Wednesday, I equated their music with the feeling of buying a new pair of jeans because that’s all I could associate them with. Jackpot. They’ve already won me over. Oddly enough, watching their set was kind of like wearing those brand new pair of jeans and enjoying the experience but every so often thinking about another pair of jeans you once wore and wishing you had them on instead. Please, I’ll explain what I mean in a bit. But first, let me tell you about Jabon and John Atkins.

We’re not into the month of February yet but I may have seen the most interesting set that I’ll see all year courtesy of Jabon. Children, gather around, let me tell you what I saw and I promise, I tell no lies. I entered Neumo’s to find what looked like a heavy plume of rising smoke coming from some incense. Upon closer examination, I found it was a smoke machine. A shitload of lit incense would have been more fitting perhaps. Obscured by the smoke was a tall, thin robed figure that was whack-a-moling up and down to the droning music he created. He would leap off the stage and kind of puppet around on the floor amongst the spectators before returning back to the stage. On his face was a luchador mask. I couldn’t help but think of Jabon as some religious zealot who wrestled in an amateur wrestling league in Pigfuck, Iowa. It was pretty awesome. Things got even more amazing when Jabon’s set entered a segment called “Stomach Noises of the Stars.” Some moons ago Jabon used to be an engineer for books-on-tape recordings. He had all this edited footage of people like Kirk Douglas and Arte Johnson coughing, making weird guttural noises, butchering words and successfully reading sentences. Jabon presented this footage in a way that it is unbelievably weird and funny. Some of the puzzled souls who left during all of this were called out by Jabon in a pretty amusing manner. Honestly, there were moments I wanted to dip out as well but I thought, “When is the next time I’m going to witness something as bizarre and hilarious as this?” Official stamp of approval.

John Atkins, you are a singer/songwriter. You are given the unenviable task of following a dude in a mask who did “Stomach Noises of the Stars” and playing before a band that has two drummers, how will you respond? Not so well. Songs about girls, structurally predictable and uninteresting. It’s hard for me to get excited about bedroom guitar players, there numbers are infinite. Long after human beings have died and gone away, there will be roaches and bedroom guitar players. Mr. Atkins had his moments, but those were far and few in-between. He didn’t seem too excited to be there or maybe I’m projecting? I was kind of bored and kept on glaring at the lights above the stage like a moth. And then suddenly, what’s this? A song that I’m genuinely enjoying. Dare I say it’s memorable? I wish all his songs were like…what’s the smell..? Fuck. Someone is wearing “Sex Panther” or just let a dead body like fart somewhere in close proximity. All the good things in my life get marred. The worst part was I was lone guy near a half dozen girls, you know who took the blame for that one.

“You should stick around for Feral Children,” I heard some girl tell a complete stranger. “They’re really good, they have two drummers!” Silly rabbit, tricks are for kids. If only it were that easy to be a good band. I’ve got a joke for you. What do you call a band with two drummers that suck? A band with liabilities. That’s liabilities, plural. That’s not to say Feral Children is a band with two drummers that suck, I’m just saying that girl had no idea what the fuck she was talking about. These Feral Children, in from the wilderness and frontier of Maple Valley, I applaud their supposed weirdness, inhale their scene cynicism, and am tickled at their disdain for imaginary big cities. Watch that marketing boys, you’ll get Hall & Oates’d. Maneater. Big city snobs might make you freshmen dorm room almost famous one day. Luckily for you, Seattle isn’t a big city. Feral Children’s set was good and energetic. The kids were into it. I was pretty into some of the jams as well. “Kid Origami” and “Universe Design” are my two favorite tracks off of Brand New Blood and they were solid live. “Enchanted Parkway”, a song that I don’t particularly like on the album was surprisingly awesome at Neumo’s. But remember when I was babbling about jeans earlier? How sometimes we can’t enjoy the moment of now because we’re too busy longing for the past? That kind of describes me during Feral Children. There were occasions during their set where I was thinking about Black Eyes, a now defunct DC-based band that were amazing noisemakers who wrote catchy pop songs when they wanted to. Seeing Feral Children’s two drummers and hearing the high vocals of Jeff Keenan made my heart long to see Black Eyes once again. Sigh. Chances are I enjoy my new pair of jeans more than the existence of Feral Children. But hey, I bought a damn good pair of blue jeans.

Brand New Blood is available via Amazon, or if you live in the Seattle area, your local record store.

Feral Children ::: photo by Josh Lovseth

Flickr: Feral Children CD Release at Neumos, January 27th, 2010